Kodama
by twopoint
Summary: Gojyo becomes lost and encounters a tree spirit. Gojyo/Hakkai


"I guess I told him what he wanted," Gojyo paused to tie back his hair before hurrying to catch up with Hakkai. They were following the stream back to the camp and the trail gave no sign that it wanted to end anytime soon. The patches of sky Gojyo could see through the trees were streaked with the weird orange that brought on sunrise or sunset, and Gojyo had to purposefully track the events of the day back to remember which one it could be.

*

They'd kept going all through the previous night, stopping for an hour break to give their bodies a chance to get the jars and rumbles and pains out of their joints. The sun had come up behind some distant hills on a straight stretch of road and they'd kept going until mid-day arrived with a weak, distant sun up above them and Hakuryuu had said, No More, depositing them all without warning on their asses, the road all rutted and damp. Gojyo could still feel the dirt caked up on his pants where he had slid to a stop. Hakuryuu flew up to rest at the top of a tree and that's when they all looked up to see how the road narrowed and the branches of old trees hooked together like contemplative fingers above it.

"I was wanting to stop here," Sanzo said.

"Yeah, right," Gojyo said and lay back on the warm dirt of the road, stretched his legs out, and watched what he could see of the clouds moving past the openings in the heavy drape of leaves.

Gojyo must have fallen asleep.

He didn't know how long he slept, only that the light had shifted when he woke, and that something was nudging his shoulder. His first thought was that Sanzo would have left him to sleep there until the next vehicle came sliding round the corner, effectively allowing Gojyo to sleep straight through to the next life.

"Get up, Gojyo," a voice, familiar, whispered into his ear. "Get up."

"Give me a minute," Gojyo mumbled, and turned on his side to stretch the hardness of the road out of his body. "I was dreaming about us going back home and everything was the same but different? It was weird. . ." Gojyo opened his eyes, expecting to see a pair of pant legs, but the forest was shadowed and warm and Gojyo only saw trunks, bark, as far as he could make out. He rolled over and looked the other way: trees, trees and a rock. Gojyo sat up, "Hakkai?" he called, looking straight, left right and, craning back behind him. "Monkey? Sanzo?" he said the last with more menace than was entirely necessary, and then he stood up.

In his heart, way down in the most important place where Gojyo stored beer and cards and well-shaped ankles, and clean sheets (as long as he wasn't the one doing the cleaning), Gojyo knew that Hakkai wouldn't leave him without good reason. And Hakuryuu would do what Hakkai asked. At the edge of Gojyo's reasoning was an odd and fleeting flutter which could have been – fondness, but he shoved it aside to deal with the facts as he had them. Gojyo had been left sleeping in the road and someone had done the leaving.

Which meant that something had happened and Gojyo had slept through it -- and the something, as these types of situations always went, probably involved the creepy, dark, dense forest. Gojyo closed his eyes and sniffed the mulchy, loamy air – which didn't tell him anything but that there were trees, lots of them. There were trees as far as he could see.

There was only one thing for him to do: keep walking, because there had to be something around the next bend.

The road ahead bore no sign of recent tire tracks, wheel tracks, footprints and the ground was damp enough to keep a record. It wasn't the first time that Gojyo had wandered off alone, but it was the first time he'd had no choice in the matter, which made it different somehow. As he walked, he started to think about things he had – nothing at the moment except the clothes on his back – which led him to the things he didn't have, which led him to the things that he might want. He started comparing things – holding them up to the things other people, youkai, had. And for Gojyo, who hadn't had time to think of much since they'd been traveling, moving forward all the time had a way of making all the things left behind all blurry, and Gojyo hadn't been one to spend a lot of time looking back before they embarked on this journey. It made Gojyo puzzled and a little frustrated, made him shove his hands into his pockets and frown as he walked down the creepy, forest road, listening for any sign of the others beneath the chirping of the insects and the strange, irregular calls of the birds high above him.

Minutes, hours, he walked. And Gojyo was starting to thinking that it had been really stupid of him to leave the spot where he woke up, when his heart caught up in his throat with the sound of footsteps coming up behind him.

"Where the fuck have you been?" he yelled, turning, happy, and he was ready to launch into all the reasons why it had been wrong to leave him sleeping all by himself in the middle of the road – but there was no one there. Gojyo cupped his hands to his eyes and peered, like there was too much light in the shadows and if he could filter it out, he'd be able to see a shape, something.

"Hello?" He called again.

Nothing.

"This isn't funny. Whoever the fuck you are, you better show your face or else I'll kick your ass." And that threat went for everyone: youkai, human, other random spirits, traveling companions playing a really not-funny joke.

The hair hanging at the back of Gojyo's neck stirred, lifted, like a hand pulled it back, tugged it aside, and whispered on his skin. Gojyo spun around and clapped a hand to the base of this neck, feeling for a bug or something equally disgusting. He kept turning until he'd made a full circle.

"I'm serious," he added, but the bite was gone from his voice. He couldn't beat the shit out of something he couldn't see. He needed Hakkai for that, or Sanzo, though Gojyo'd never say it out loud. Gojyo hadn't spent as much time with ghosts; he tried his best to ignore them under normal circumstances, because he'd found that the more attention one gave a ghost, the more they tended to put down roots and make themselves at home, sleep in the bed, take up space, rearrange your shit. Ghosts were high maintenance.

Gojyo closed his eyes to think, to gather his wits. This place creeped him out, made him imagine things. His first order of business was to find the others, next was to get the fuck out of the forest. He'd taken a step forward to make his way back to where he started when a breeze fluttered past Gojyo's mouth, lingered there, just there, nowhere else, like the moth he'd almost swallowed a few nights back when they'd all been sitting around a fire and he'd opened his mouth to tell the monkey to shut up. Gojyo found himself grabbing at air, trying to catch the breeze blowing against his lips. No, it wasn't like a moth at all; it was like breath, like words trying to get inside him.

Gojyo ducked down, covered his head, and scrambled forward a few steps. He held out his palms like an offering. "Listen, whoever you are, I don't have nothing you want. See?" He was tempted to turn out his pockets. "I'm all empty. But, if you don't mind . . ." Gojyo peered out through his hair and took in the sun dappled road, for now, it wasn't too long until sunset . . ."show yourself to me and we can strike a bargain."

He'd missed something while he slept, Gojyo had no doubt about it, and he wouldn't be able to do anything until he knew what he was up against. He felt like the world was just filled with trees, not a soul around anywhere.

A heavy hand slapped down on his shoulder.

Gojyo turned, slowly, his own had ready to call up an answer, but something in him said, _wait_. A figure came into view, so close he could reach out and touch it. Gojyo stared at a chest draped in shifting rags, grey like the tree bark in the shadows, and his gaze followed up and up until he was looking into the oldest face he'd ever seen in his life, creased and shifting like the rags the old thing wore, two eyes like black slits of starlight.

"What the fuck?" Gojyo said, because he'd seen a lot of things – a lot of weird things – but nothing quite as weird as this.

"You're a heavy sleeper," the tall thing said.

"You don't know the half of it," Gojyo said, neck craned to look up and his nose wrinkled in bewilderment. To his credit, he remembered to close his mouth once he'd finished speaking.

After further study, the creature appeared to be a walking tree, with arms draping from tapered shoulders and long, grey fingers like twigs, motioning for Gojyo to listen. "You're going the wrong way. What you seek is in the forest."

"And you know what I'm looking for?"

"I would say so," the tree creature giggled,with a gurgling burp, offset by the coy way he covered his mouth with his twigs. "I know it better than you."

"How do I know you're not a liar?"

"Oh, the trees don't lie. We can't. You might find lying trees in other parts, but we keep a strict code of manners in this forest."

"Bullshit, I've met liars with manners, and I used to have a lying tree outside my window. It was green in the winter and all droopy and sick in the summer."

"That was a confused tree and I'd say it found a proper home with you. Like always finds like."

An early owl hooted in the distance, as if in agreement.

Gojyo sighed. "You don't seem like the bloody sort, Mr. Tree. I'm looking for my friends, have you seen anyone pass this way in the past couple of hours?"

The tree examined its grimy fingernails. "I might have. What's it worth to you."

"I'm not going to be bribed by a fucking tree." Gojyo planted his hands on his hips and stared up.

The tree shrugged. "I believe you mentioned something about a bargain. I suppose I'll be on my way then." It turned to wander off in the direction of the darkest copse. It walked slowly, but covered great space with the immense stretch of its legs.

The farther they traveled, the weirder things got, it seemed – and Gojyo had to find Hakkai and the rest of them if there was going to be anymore traveling. If he didn't find them, or if there were caught and hurt somewhere, if they weren't coming back . . . he wondered what it would be like to just stay lost in the woods for the rest of his life, eating bark and twigs until his clothes had crumbled off and moss grew over his toes. If he didn't have anywhere to be, or anyone to talk to . . . a cold trickle of panic, like ice water, worked its way down Gojyo's spine.

The green, damp drape of the low hanging canopy had almost swallowed the walking tree up when Gojyo called out. "Wait!"

The tree was either responsible for everyone leaving, or the only thing with a voice that could give Gojyo a clue where to start. He'd never met a talking tree, but it didn't seem dangerous, not in an axe-wielding way.

The tree turned slowly and its mouth spread with a creaking smile. "Yes?"

"I don't have anything. I don't have water or money or a watch. I've got two smokes, but I don't have a light." He brandished the cigarette pack for emphasis. "I don't have shit, but I need to find my friends before dark. Think you could find it in your big tree heart to help me?" Gojyo smiled his best smile in return and waited; he'd bartered with worse odds in the past and the tree seemed agreeable to flirting. One worked with the weapons at hand, or so Hakkai always said.

The tree's fathomless starry night eyes narrowed, considering. "What are you? You don't smell like a human."

"I'm a little bit of everything -- the good parts."

"Very well, then you might have something I want."

"I might." Gojyo agreed, and followed him closer to the edge of the woods.

"Want," the tree said.

"That's what I said." Gojyo wondered if he shouldn't have just kept walking instead of calling the thing back. The cold panic that had seized him was replaced by a feeling of heaviness, like his mind was working two clicks behind his tongue.

"No . . ." the tree shook its great, mossy-haired head. "Want. That's something you can trade. You must want something, so tell me what it is that you want and I'll help you find your friends. The woods would tell me if they were in danger, so you have some time to think."

Gojyo looked at the thing like it was crazy, which it very well could be. "I'm not getting you."

"No, you wouldn't," the tree sighed. "I have stood here forever, a part of this forest watching the days pass, the seasons, locked away and unable to drag my feet toward the east or the west, always in the same circle, but it was not always that way. Farther than memory can reach, I was able to roam and I fought and I lived and I loved, and then I lost, and this has been my lot ever since. I don't mind it so much, the quietness. We have travelers pass through, but they seldom feel comfortable to spend the night – or sleep in the middle of the road. I could stay here for another hundred years, but I found you in the road just now and I bent and breathed against your neck, and I remembered what it was like to want, but it's a memory that has no shape. So you will tell me what it is that you want and I will listen and then I will help you find your lost friends and we'll be even."

It was an eloquent speech, but it didn't fool Gojyo one bit. "I could tell you anything you wanted to hear, but how do I know that you'll help me?"

"I'd say there were no guarantees." The tree quirked his bushy brow and waited.

Gojyo thought of Hakkai's expression when he was about to beat Gojyo in a game of cards and decided play along. "I guess you're as trustworthy as any."

"It's difficult to say," the tree agreed.

"Okay, let's get on with it." Gojyo took a seat against the warm, grassy bank lining the road, and motioned for the tree to join him. As he sat, he felt like all the urgency to go and find and fix was pulled out of his palms and pressed into the dirt where it could wait a while. Gojyo felt indistinct, heavy; there were a thousand things he should be doing, but all he could manage were the things in front of him, the things he could see, like the warm brush of the grass beneath his hands and the creaking clicks of the tree sitting down beside him, if it could be called sitting, more like his limbs rearranged into a different order of snarls and bends and trailing roots.

They sat there silently for some time.

"What's the real reason," Gojyo said, eventually. It was very much like sitting at a bar with a stranger, down to the lazy beer-numbness in his feet, but he'd never been in a bar that smelled so pleasant, or was so perfectly warm. A distant part of his mind said, _Go_, while the other said, _Listen_. "I get the feeling that I'm helping you more than you're helping me."

"Let us help each other," the tree said.

"And how are we going about that, again?"

"We both want to get out of here," the tree creaked its gaze away from Gojyo as he said this.

"And you can't just show me the way?"

"I need you to tell me what you want."

There was a lot more to it than that, Gojyo thought. Maybe he was still dreaming and any minute, a boot would connect with his ribs and all his problems would be solved. "I've got everything I need, or at least I did this morning."

"You really want me to believe that you're content with everything you've got," the tree said, some time later.

"I don't want shit," Gojyo agreed, stretching back to lounge with his elbows propped against the grass. He breathed deeply. "Except for a light. You wouldn't happen to have one, would you?"

"Sorry," the tree clicked a branch at him. "Flammable."

"Hmph. I just live the days as they come," Gojyo continued.

Gojyo and the tree stared at the road in silence for a while. The sun slipped low on the horizon, just out of sight beyond the trees and the gentle, sloping hills, but present in Gojyo's memory like seasons and voices.

"Surely you've turned to one of your traveling companions, perhaps after you've had a few drinks, and you said, 'Today I would like . . .'" the tree offered.

Gojyo shook his head. "Wouldn't happen, and if it did, chances are I'd receive everything but what I wanted. That's the way we work. But if we're talking about what you can give me, I would like to get out of here eventually."

"That's not quite what I was searching for. Let me be clearer, I need to hear about the thing that makes you lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling or any hovel you've found yourself in, listening to the rain and . . ."

"You're bargaining with the wrong stranded traveler if you're into rain freakiness. I kinda like rainy nights."

"That's just what I was getting at – you're very defensive, let me finish. So, you're lying there listening to the rain and your thoughts are drifting and you can't get settled. What is it you most want then?"

Gojyo smiled, the kind of smile that worked its way up to a wink. "The wanting would be over and done with because I wouldn't be alone in that bed, and we'd have just . . ."

"Who is there with you?" The tree spirit lurched forward and Gojyo shrank back to get away from his mossy breath.

"I'm not into oaks, dude. You're like some sort of freaky tree voyeur." Maybe he wasn't a tree at all, but something trapped in a tree body. Things were starting to simultaneously make more and less sense to Gojyo.

"Well, then?"

"Shit – it would have to be that girl I'd . . ." Gojyo, so much in the present, couldn't go that far back, but as far as he could go, he couldn't remember the last time he'd picked up any hot girl and brought her back to his dark, nighttime, rain drenched hovel. If it was raining, he'd be lying in bed wondering where everybody else was, and if they were okay, and if he'd need to go find Hakkai and drag him someplace dry before Hakuryuu got all upset and started screeching in Gojyo's ear and then no one got to sleep.

"What girl?" the tree waited, expectantly.

The tree needed a secret, that much was clear, and it was going the traditional route. Gojyo could tell him about his mother or the reason they were traveling, or any number of things, but something put his tongue all in knots. He wondered how many people could know about something and it still be a secret. The problem with bargaining with spirits was that the spirit could most likely call your bluff – not that he'd ever met a tree spirit – and then, Gojyo thought, in cases such as this, one would be turned into a tree for a hundred years, and if the current situation was any indication, trees were nosey little shits that poked their twigs where they didn't belong. And that might be the answer to the tree problem – Gojyo felt he was starting to slowly understand things.

Gojyo didn't have a problem helping a tree out, not if it would also help him find the others and get out of the forest. The problem was that Gojyo could think of anything he wanted.

"What girl?" the tree repeated.

"No girl," Gojyo amended, but the tiny trickle of panic was back.

"Well then?"

"If . . ." Gojyo punctuated each thought with a raised finger, "if we're talking about now, and if I was in some random room staring at the ceiling and if it was raining, I'd go look for the monk and make sure he was all tucked in and not shooting at things, people, and then I'd want . . .Yes, _want_, okay? To go look for Hakkai and make sure he wasn't standing in the street getting drenched, because then I'd be, _we'd_ be, fucked."

The tree narrowed his shiny, black eyes and smiled. "So, you want Hakkai."

"Yes," Gojyo agreed, and then, "No! I don't want . . ."

"That's what you said."

Gojyo crossed his arms across his chest and glared at the road. The panic was back full-force, but it wasn't the kind that put his feet in motion going off into the woods to turn over every rock until he found what he was looking for. It was the other kind of panic, the irrational kind that made Gojyo feel like he should go find things he didn't need, the kind that made him do stupid things. "I want to find the others so I can get out of here."

"Immediate wants are of no concern to me. I want water and sunlight. These are the things I need to survive. What makes you ache?"

"You're talking heart's desire shit." Like he'd been found out – that's what Gojyo felt like, because there was only one thing he'd never told anyone, and the last thing that needed to hear it was some random tree, even if it broke its freakish tree curse.

"In so many words, yes."

Gojyo scratched his head and thought for a very long time. "You know, I'd kill for a drink," he said, eventually, and very well meant it.

"I put that in the category of a cigarette."

"I meant it would help me think. You're awfully hard to please – I want all sorts of things when I have a drink in my hand, and I usually get them by the end of the night."

The tree spirit rose slowly with a groaning creak, bits of leaves and dust flicked from his clothes down to the ground. Gojyo watched him amble a few steps down the road before he realized he was no closer to finding the others than he had been when he woke and found them missing, and drink or no drink, he was going to have to think fast. He was going to have to come up with something good, something that sounded like a secret, or his heart's desire, or some shit, the sort of thing people believed in before they realized that living was hard and ugly, and it was better to not want anything because then there was nothing for the world to take away. Gojyo watched the tree spirit walk down the road, and he thought and he thought and he thought until he started kind of thinking like someone else, someone who was free to want things. Which made those sorts of people pretty stupid, Gojyo thought.

"Hey! Wait up!" he called, and brushed the twigs from his pants and hurried to catch up with the tree, which was hard to do, though it seemed to move slowly.

As he loped up beside him, the tree flicked an annoyed glance in Gojyo's direction. "Oh, it's you again."

Gojyo slowed and tried to match the tree step for step, failed, and settled for two steps for every clicking one. He decided to try a different approach: "Damn straight, listen Mr. Tree, I really need to find the ones I'm traveling with. I'm starting to really worry. They could be hurt or in danger and they might really need for me to save them, and I can't do that if I don't know where they are." But even as he said it, Gojyo thought of himself trapped out in the forest forever, and he wondered if he was the one that was lost, and the others might come around any moment, and . . .

"They're fine," the tree said irritably, and picked up his pace.

Gojyo kept up with him. Maybe the answer was a secret. He'd spooked himself with the thought of being stuck where no one could find him. Fighting he could deal with, but lost in the middle of nowhere, that was something he didn't want to think about. He was pissed at the pitch of his voice as he continued, "If I tell you something – something, you know, secret, do you think you would still consider helping me? I know a secret's not the same as a desire, or whatever it is that you're after, but it's the best I can do on short notice."

"You seem to be a creature of simple tastes."

Gojyo wasted several moments trying to decide if the tree had given him a compliment. The tree was a lot like Hakkai in that way, Gojyo had been thinking that ever since he'd felt its breath on his mouth earlier, warm, like moth's wings, not that Gojyo had ever felt Hakkai's breath. And how Gojyo didn't know where he stood with the spirit who wanted something that Gojyo wasn't sure how to give, and Gojyo wanted something too from the spirit, and it was like an intricate and confusing dance that no one had ever thought to show Gojyo the steps to, and . . . oh . . .

"I think I get it now," Gojyo said, and he found it was easier to find the words if he slouched down, stared at his feet moving along the road, and didn't think very hard at all. He found it difficult to look in the tree spirit's direction. Long moments passed as they walked side by side. The sunlight slanted directly down the road, late summer pollen and insects flitted around in the eerie light.

"Well, are you planning to share your thoughts or will you simply follow me around all night?"

"I need to find the guys I came here with."

"You said that already."

"Because one of them's my best friend."

"That's nice."

"And . . ."

Gojyo kicked a rock. "And I'd hate to be lost in these woods forever, because there's something I need to do, I mean, tell him, you know?"

The tree stopped and turned toward Gojyo, who quit walking and looked up and up.

"If you tell me that it is imperative for you to find your friend so you can tell him that you cheated him at cards, or kicked his dog, I'll be sorely disappointed," the tree said.

"Nothing like that." Gojyo's hands couldn't disappear any further into his pockets. "Though I have cheated him a lot, still doesn't help me win, and I would kick his dragon if it would be still long enough. I hadn't really thought much about it, but now that you're been pressuring me with questions all afternoon. . ."

"Hardly."

"Whatever. He does things, sometimes, my friend – and he doesn't know he's doing them, at least I don't think so," Gojyo would consider the meaning of _that_ later, "like he'll put his hand on my shoulder, or he'll say something real close to my ear and recently, it hasn't always been this way, but now when he does it, I feel like the air's been sucked out of the air, and my fingers feel numb, but where he's touching me, it feels like something's moving through my skin. It freaks me out. When it first happened, I thought it was because of him, he can heal things, and when he does, it feels all warm and shit. But now I'm not so sure, I'm starting to think it's not him at all, that maybe it's just me." Gojyo paused because something else occurred to him. "You're not going to pass this along to anyone, are you?"

The tree laughed. "No, not at all. I don't have anyone to tell."

"Good." They stared at each other awkwardly. "So, will you tell me where to find him now?"

"Soon." They continued down the road in a shuffle of feet and bark.

Gojyo felt the heaviness lift from his legs as he walked. He didn't know what to do with the things he knew, but he was glad to be moving, though it still felt a lot like waiting. He knew he should be hurrying the tree, but his body wouldn't agree with the urgency in his head. "What were you before you were a tree?" he asked.

The tree answered him right away. "I was a person who didn't have an answer for a tree."

The tree glanced down toward Gojyo who was finding it difficult to breathe. He'd had a lot of near misses, and he'd often gotten by on luck, but this brush had been so quiet he'd almost missed it. He imagined what it would feel like to grow branches, and pushed the thought quickly from his head. "That sounds like a sucky position," he said, and stared at his feet. "What will you do now?"

"I don't know," the tree said. "You've been a great help. I'll think of something."

"Yeah, thanks?" Gojyo said, and kicked a rock. He allowed himself a tiny glance at the tree's face and found that he was smiling. Around them, the dips and grooves of the ditches and bends in the road looked very familiar; these woods were strange like that.

"What will you do now?" the tree asked, his long clacking fingers stretching and closing. He stared at them as if he had only just noticed them.

"Same as I've always done," Gojyo said, but he didn't know if that would be possible.

"Why don't you try something different?" The tree still sounded distracted, but he quit staring at his hands and turned to look at Gojyo.

"I've had enough different for this lifetime, traveling with a pack of freaks. Different finds us wherever we go." Gojyo stared at the tree pointedly.

"I meant with your friend, why don't you tell him what it feels like when he stands so close. I know we've just met, but I've been trapped here forever, and I've tried for centuries to make someone tell me one desire, the thing that they most wanted, that's all. It's been harder than you might think -- I've lied and begged and tricked and schemed, and I'd almost given up, but then you arrived and I decided to just go ahead and ask."

Gojyo glanced around at the forest suspiciously. He didn't want to know how many wrong answers waited in the endless trunks. "That's nice," he said. "You're going to tell me how to find my friends now?"

"You don't have long to wait. Listen closely, when you see your friend again, do the first thing that comes to mind."

Gojyo laughed. "You're the first thing I've met that's encouraged that sort of behavior from me."

"I'd suggest you not kick the dragon, or antagonize the blond one."

"Yeah, yeah. So you've really seen them?"

"I see what you see, there . . ." the tree lifted one fine, long finger and pointed to a bend in the road.

Gojyo realized he was back where he started. The rock looked familiar, as did the smooth spots in the road where they all had landed and slid when Hakuryuu dumped them. "Motherfucker," Gojyo said.

"Yes. You'll find them down the hillside by the stream where they decided to camp for the night and wait for you."

"They've been there the whole time?"

"They were refilling your water supply when you decided to go for a walk."

"So, they've been waiting for me all afternoon?" Gojyo didn't have the energy to end the statement with a curse. He'd hear enough later once the monk got a hold of him. "This is why it's not a good idea for me to follow my hunches."

"You panicked," the tree said.

"I don't panic."

The spirit regarded him with that black, stony gaze for so long, Gojyo felt his skin would crawl off. But as they stared at each other, Gojyo saw something different begin to form in the tree's eyes, like the way the darkness turned to grey before morning. "What?" Gojyo asked, unnerved.

"You know what to do. Now go do it." And with that, the tree spirit slipped away into the forest; his steps seemed lighter, easier, and as Gojyo watched and listened, he felt the clicking, clacking of its walk fade into the wind long after the loamy shadows swallowed him up.

"Shit," Gojyo said, to the sky. It was almost night.

*

He did what any honorable half-youkai would do in his situation. Gojyo waited until the evening had spread out in inky blackness past the tree trunks and hills, and then he slipped, stumbled down the slick embankment – the moon, apparently was on a much needed vacation from all the gazers, lovers and co-inhibitors – and he tip-toed quietly to the place where Sanzo and Goku and Hakkai rested beside the murmuring, peaceful stream. Their location was easy to find, in retrospect.

A quick glance proved Sanzo and Goku were fast asleep; at least something was in Gojyo's favor.

Hakkai was awake and watching Gojyo slowly make his way closer to the stream. He did not look relieved so much as patient.

Gojyo went close and motioned for Hakkai to get up. "Come here," he whispered, and reached down to pull him up.

*

It was important that they sleep; they really should sleep, but the forest glowed in new moon moss and lichen; the stream slipped by like a clock counting music and it seemed wrong to challenge the strange language of the night birds with talk. Gojyo and Hakkai followed the twisting path of the streambed until they came to a clearing that seemed carved out from rock and soil, crafted like the flat table of their old home that they'd locked up so as to not tempt thieves more desperate than them before they started out on this journey. Gojyo wondered if they'd have a saucepan left if they ever made their way back, not that he'd know what to do with it, or the table with the two chairs and the one bed and the bathroom that encouraged viney fingers of mold as if the walls were waiting for long jointed fingers to stretch out over them, flat , exploring. Gojyo didn't mind the decoration of the mold until Hakkai had swiped it away with vinegar saying, "That's good for now, but it will be back. It holds a memory."

"Hakkai, listen," Gojyo said and pulled him down to sit with him on the flat rock. He didn't let go of Hakkai's hand, even when they were sitting side by side, staring at the stream. The places where their skin intersected felt like water, felt like current, felt like . . . "I dind't mean to wander off."

"We searched for you for hours," Hakkai said.

"I woke up in the road and I yelled but no one answered."

"I told Sanzo we should fill the water bottles, so he came down with me and watched the stream while Goku helped. When we came back to the road, you were gone. Where did you go?" There was desperation behind the tense set of Hakkai's jaw that did not make sense with the calmness of his voice. "It's not the first time you've decided to choose your own path, but it was all I could do to convince Sanzo to camp here tonight to wait to see if you came back. I told him that Hakuryuu needed rest, but . . ."

"A tree spirit captured me," Gojyo said, and quickly let go of Hakkai's hand.

"I admit they're very captivating trees," Hakkai looked across the stream and studied the dark trunks with their trailing branches bending low toward the water. He absently rubbed at the scrapes on his knuckles where they had collided with the rock.

Gojyo winced. "Sorry, I didn't know your hand was that heavy. But, it was a real spirit, this tree, and it walked and talked and wouldn't let me go anywhere 'til I told him everything he wanted to hear. I think it released him from a curse or something."

"It held you captive?" Hakkai suddenly sat up straighter, if that were at all possible, and his eyes narrowed. "I haven't felt anything amiss in this place. I rather liked it."

"Captive, that's what he did, and it went on for hours."

"I hope you didn't tell him anything sensitive, or you broke away from him before you talked. You're not injured?" Hakkai looked Gojyo over, and reached out to brush his hair back from his face; Gojyo shrugged him off.

"No I didn't tell him anything _sensitive_," Gojyo said, and felt heat rise to his face. What he said was true, sort of. True enough.

Hakkai kept peering. "Hmmm . . ."

"I'm fine. Stop it. The tree kept saying one thing but it felt like he meant something else." Gojyo lowered his voice, because, really, any of the random trees around them could be listening. "I told him just enough so he would show me where to find you."

"So you had no need to fight him?"

"No. No fighting." Gojyo picked at the rock.

"And he allowed you to walk away?"

"Yep. I think he needed my help to get out of here." Which he did, but Gojyo still couldn't help but feel he was lying.

Hakkai quit looking for injuries and stared, instead, straight and level until Gojyo, to his credit, looked up from the rock and his knuckles and stared straight back.

"Where did you meet this tree?" Hakkai asked.

"He ambushed me on the road." Gojyo knew that Hakkai liked the word ambush, and it seemed fitting enough to use it because the tree had come out of nowhere, so to speak. He couldn't find the words to say anything he needed to say, so he decided to steal Hakkai's words until his own came back.

"Did you call out?" Hakkai kept asking all the wrong things.

"Yes, I did," Gojyo said, because he had called out before the tree arrived, but Hakkai hadn't specified a time for the calling.

"That's peculiar."

"Listen, Hakkai, forget about the tree for a minute. You make my head hurt."

Hakkai frowned.

"Wouldn't it suck to get stuck here for a hundred years waiting for someone to talk to?" The words were coming a little easier now, but Gojyo still wasn't sure where he was heading. He wanted to just be done with it and say: _Shut up and listen_, _I was almost turned into a tree today_! but he wasn't sure it would help his case.

"I think the woods are pleasant," Hakkai said, and it was the sort of thinking that Gojyo didn't know how to work around.

"So you wouldn't mind staying here all by yourself?" Gojyo felt his eyes get wider as he asked and he couldn't stop dragging his fingers against the rock.

"It would be nice for a while, but I imagine it would get lonely," Hakkai said, thoughtful.

"That's kind of how I felt." And then it felt like Gojyo'd said too much.

Hakkai frowned even more. "Are you sure that tree didn't do something?" Hakkai reached up to brush Gojyo's hair back again, it had settled across his face, and this time Gojyo didn't stop him; he leaned closer, which placed one of Hakkai's fingers across his nose and another at an odd angle across Gojyo's mouth, but he didn't let that stop him. He spoke around the finger, "Talking's nice and all, but I don't think I would be waiting for someone to talk to."

Hakkai pressed his hand into Gojyo's hair and Gojyo was both relieved to switch the angle and uncertain what to do next. He also missed Hakkai's finger on his mouth. He figured at some point, he should do something, but he wasn't quite sure what; he'd grown so accustomed to Hakkai doing all the work, figuring stuff out.

"I take it that the tree wasn't malicious," Hakkai said, distracted.

"You never know," Gojyo whispered.

Gojyo was leaning so hard into Hakkai's fingers all wrapped up in his hair that when Hakkai pulled away suddenly with a snag of tangle –he might have pulled some out – Gojyo almost fell into Hakkai. He caught himself belatedly, but he was closer, which was a start, while Hakkai wrapped his arms around his own knees and stared into the water of the slow moving stream.

"I read a story once about tree spirits, which led me to believe the trees collect voices, a vast library of voices that they experiment with when no one is nearby to hear them."

"That tree stole my fucking voice?" Which would explain why Gojyo thought Hakkai had called out to him, but still. It didn't really matter now that he had Hakkai here and the others weren't lost. "I don't think this one was always a tree spirit, or that he'll always be one now that we've talked."

"If he took your voice he should have given you something in exchange. Did you give you something, Gojyo?" Hakkai still stared at the water and his voice was distant as if he were working through several things at once

Gojyo thought back, the tree had given him a head-ache with all its talking without saying anything and wanting to know what Gojyo wanted, but there at the end it had suggested something, something about regret. "I think he was telling me to follow my instinct." Again, he didn't say anything about being almost turned into a tree spirit, because it was only a hunch, and it hadn't happened after all – Gojyo stretched his legs out to be certain. The heaviness was all faded.

"That is sound advice."

"Not just in general, but when it comes to . . ."

"What?"

"You. . . you know."

"No, I really don't," Hakkai said, and it was the truth because he couldn't know, not unless Gojyo told him.

Their legs were almost touching. If Gojyo scooted closer, which he did, he could get that little jolt up his spine, or down it, he'd never had to deal with hesitancy before, with being incapable of taking something he craved, taking it and taking it until he didn't want it anymore. He wanted this so much, even the tiniest touch of their legs, that he was afraid of ruining it by getting it. Gojyo didn't want to imagine a time when he wouldn't want Hakkai touching him.

Gojyo sighed and smacked the rock. He had two choices, and it wasn't the sort of thing he could flip a coin over, so he was stuck. Only one way to find out . . .

He slid closer, and soon they were leaning into each other, staring at the water, so close that it would be hard to pry them apart with a stick, and warm like the last of the sunlight caught up in the rock underneath them.

"What did the tree spirit ask you?"

Hakkai would have to keep asking. Gojyo shrugged with his free shoulder. "He asked me what I wanted."

"What did you tell him?"

"Nothing."

"Then why did he bring you back?"

"I think I frustrated the shit out of him."

"That would do it," Hakkai laughed, and Gojyo felt it more than heard it.

Somehow Gojyo's head ended up leaning on Hakkai's shoulder, but just barely. His neck hurt from trying to hold it up at that angle. Hakkai bent his head slightly toward Gojyo so his next words were quiet, close: "If the spirit had asked me what I wanted, more than anything, I know exactly what I would have told him. It's easier saying these things to a tree, I would think. They don't travel far from their forests and their leaves have a way of keeping secrets."

"Really?" Gojyo gave up and allowed his head to rest fully on Hakkai's shoulder until his words sounded all muffled, half-heard.

"Absolutely. I can think of nothing safer to tell secrets to. Those sort of secrets that one would rather not have spread around, or the ones you can't find the words for."

"I think you're right." If Gojyo turned his head, just so . . .

"There are several trees around as we speak," Hakkai continued.

. . .he could press his face to Hakkai's neck, and as face was usually accompanied by lips, he could press those too.

"And I don't think they'll mind, umm, listening."

There would be much debate on who kissed who first, depending on how one qualified the word – Gojyo had, technically, kissed Hakkai's neck, but it was Hakkai who bent down and kissed Gojyo's mouth and they kept up like that, Gojyo's head on Hakkai's shoulder, Hakkai bending until Gojyo moved and held his head in place and added his tongue to the mix, which in Gojyo's estimation signified a proper kiss, so it came down to a question of beliefs and ethics in the philosophy of kissing.

In which Gojyo was well studied. He'd thought about this, wanted this, in an unspecified, foggy way, as if spending too much time with the specifics, figuring out what he would do if Hakkai let him do more than an innocent touch here and there, would counteract it ever happening. Gojyo had learned early on that wishes were doomed to failure; the thing he wanted most would, inexplicably, turn to the opposite, so he'd taught himself to not want anything too much. He tried to relate this with some reserve against Hakkai's mouth, and failed miserably.

The second thing he'd learned was: when presented with something he really wanted, if he hadn't been able to stop wanting it, take it fast before it went away, changed its mind, or tried to chop your head off. Hakkai was likely to do any and all of the above, so Gojyo allowed his tongue to say _stay_, and his hands to keep Hakkai in place, and his weight to press Hakkai back against the rock, but he refused to use his voice in case the trees might try to steal it. Some things were sacred.

Like kissing, an arrhythmic, repetitive mantra, the ordinary path to the divine, Gojyo was certainly no priest. Oh hell, kisses were like cheating, another one of Gojyo's good traits, all wrapped up in the present and – _wait a second_ and _fuck, you taste good_. A flex of fingers against Gojyo's hip, made Gojyo suddenly abandon all his theories because – Gojyo pulled back to speak, but just a space so the trees wouldn't take it. "You're not trying to get away?" There was something to be said about asking with breath, words lost in Hakkai's mouth because they were too close.

"I don't think you were really listening to what I said earlier," Hakkai breathed back.

"What? About the trees?" He pressed his mouth to Hakkai's collarbone, explored the hollow of his throat, and moved on to fingers unfastening by rote memory, buttons were buttons, and all the while, Gojyo had the sense to wonder at which point he'd made up his mind about all this.

There were also better places to do this than the rock.

"I told you what I wanted," Hakkai said.

And then Gojyo was urging him up, pulling him along to the soft grass along the bank. Hakkai shed his shirt along the way and made short work of Gojyo's, so when they met again horizontally, with a short break for mouths and hands and vertical heat, Gojyo's legs were to either side of Hakkai's hips and he felt torn in nearly a thousand pieces because thinking was different from having, and Gojyo hadn't started giving words to it until that day, and somehow it was okay because Hakkai had started it.

"That tree talked like you," Gojyo said into Hakkai's hair.

"It's very possible. He could have stolen my voice earlier." Though Hakkai answered carefully, deliberately, he pressed up in such a way that it was clear he was through with talking.

And Gojyo almost shut up. Almost. He leaned down and pressed his face again to Hakkai's neck, because he liked it there, in the juncture of Hakkai's shoulder, and licked up to Hakkai's ear.

"It wasn't his voice so much – it was the way he went about things," Gojyo said, quiet and close. Then his eyes closed, heavy, and he felt his way, with his lips, to Hakkai's mouth. Kissing Hakkai was worse, was better, than feeling like the air was being sucked out of the air. It was like having something to say but not being able to say it fast enough.

They kept up like that until their foreheads ended up pressed together and their breath was similar, raspy, uneven.

"Gojyo, what did you do with that tree?"

"Talked."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I only flirted with him a little."

"I don't rather not hear the rest," Hakkai said, and Gojyo laughed.

They went back to kissing, lazy, slow, like the woods had a rhythm and eventually everything that touched the ground in that place would find it. Their hips kept up the same pace, until Gojyo straightened out his legs, tucking a knee between Hakkai's and then the rhythm kept up, different, better.

"Hakkai?"

"Hmmm?"

"How would tree sex work?" Gojyo couldn't keep his mouth shut, but he slid his hand down to make sure Hakkai's interest outweighed his irritation.

"It would have something to do with pollination, I suppose. Typically trees do not move about."

"This tree walked." Gojyo pressed closer, closer; Hakkai's thumbs trailed across Gojyo's cheeks before he was pulling him down. Hakkai's gaze was there, watching Gojyo before their mouths got all tangled up again, decisions, whose tongue in which mouth, a small struggle – and Gojyo couldn't look back, not yet. He just closed his eyes and felt.

The smallest thing took on more significance: the sound of the stream, a gasp, Hakkai's hand shoving between them to work at Gojyo's belt, the click, clacking of the branches, a groan.

Gojyo pulled back. "You don't think he pollinated me, do you?"

Hakkai took a moment to catch up. His expression was half-lidded, dreamy, happy. "Oh. The tree? I don't think it would matter if he did. You get tree pollen on you all the time; we all do. Unless you've never . . ." Hakkai froze.

A small chill frizzled through the bone deep heat that had settled all through Gojyo. "What?"

"You think we're doing this because someone, some tree, tricked you?" Hakkai did try to roll away then, but Gojyo pinned him down with two quick hands pressed into the damp ground at either side of Hakkai's head, and his foot hooked across Hakkai's ankle.

"Not like that. Don't be stupid."

"So you wanted this?"

"Yeah," he whispered. "I was just kidding about the tree."

"How long?"

"Not sure." Gojyo could say it better the other way, and he didn't know the answer to the question because it wasn't about realizations, or want, or when. It had always been there, like knowing when the sun was about to set.

His answer seemed good enough for Hakkai, who didn't ask again but became more liquid under Gojyo's hand, like the question had been wiped out of him, sent down into the leaves and the dirt and the twisted, reaching roots underneath them.

And it was hard to speak when Hakkai's skin had Gojyo's tongue's full attention, because he tasted like the forest, all mixed up with the air and the water and the moss. It was a night for hands and mouths, for figuring out where they began to fit together: the way Gojyo's lips fit into the crook of Hakkai's elbow, the way his palm fit pressing against, around, up Hakkai's cock. Variations of sounds that weren't words, but should be.

They did not sleep at all.

*

"I guess I told him what he wanted," Gojyo paused to tie back his hair before hurrying to catch up with Hakkai. They were following the stream back to the camp and the trail gave no sign that it wanted to end anytime soon. The patches of sky Gojyo could see through the trees were streaked with the weird orange that brought on sunrise or sunset in this place, and Gojyo had to purposefully track the events of the day to remember which one it could be.

"This is all the fucking dragon's fault."

"I think you might be right, Gojyo."


End file.
